EUCOM Commander Advocates New Policy on Russia

 For two decades, the United States "hugged the bear" in Europe, but that has to change, the commander of U.S. European Command, or EUCOM, said.

Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, who also serves as NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe, has advocated for more U.S. forces in Europe to counter growing Russian capabilities and capacity. He spoke to reporters traveling with Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States and its allies saw an opportunity to try to make Russia a partner. But a strategy document signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin last week names the United States and the expansion of the NATO alliance as threats to his country. Breedlove said the policy document merely codified Russian actions for several years.

A 'REVANCHIST RUSSIA'

"What I would offer is that if you look at Russia's actions all the way back to '08 - in Georgia, in Nagorno-Karabakh, in Crimea, in the Donbass, and now down in Syria - we see what most call a revanchist Russia that has put force back on the table as an instrument of national power to meet their objectives," the general said.

This means there has to be changes in the way U.S. military forces operate in Europe, he added, noting that for 20 years, U.S. military decisions were guided by the effort to make Russia a partner.

"Across that time … we have changed our force structure, we have changed our [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] allocations, we've changed our analytical allocations, [and] we've downsized the forces in all the media here in Europe," he said.

Now, Breedlove said, U.S. military officials look at Russian capabilities and capacity and have to adjust.

MORE U.S. CAPABILITY IN EUROPE

Breedlove has advocated for more U.S. service members and more capabilities in Europe, and that is beginning to happen. A fourth destroyer has arrived in Spain, for example, and the Army is rotating a brigade-sized unit to Europe, he said.

But it is more than simply building up numbers, he added. For 13 years, he said, EUCOM was focused on training other nations to join the counterinsurgency fight in Afghanistan.

"We are really good at counterinsurgency targeting," Breedlove said. "It's been a long time since we've done an air campaign the size of Iraq 1 or Iraq 2, or even in the opening days of Afghanistan. We need to get back to those high-end skills to ensure we have the depth of bench for that fight.

"As Afghanistan drew down, we were prescient," he continued. "We decided … that we needed to train to high-end Article 5 capabilities. That was our plan, even before Crimea." Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty states that an attack on one NATO ally will be considered an attack on all allies.

REDEVELOPING HIGH-END CAPABILITY

Russia's actions validate the decision, the general said. "Now every Soldier, sailor, airman or Marine that comes to European Command will be focused on redeveloping that high-end kinetic fighting capability," he added.

All exercises and training will stress these capabilities, the general said, and EUCOM also will exercise at division and corps level in the future.

Breedlove said he cannot tell what Putin intends to do with the military he has re-equipped and retrained.

"Many people ask me, 'What is Putin thinking?' or 'What do you think he's thinking?'" he said. "I'm not sure what he's thinking, but I can look at what he's doing and derive from that what we should be thinking about on our side."

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Dunford: Russian Threat Assessment Unchanged

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters traveling with him to U.S. European Command headquarters in Germany that a new Russian national security strategy document naming the United States as a threat does not change his perception of the threat posed by Russia.

Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. said the U.S. military "has always been focused on Russian capability development." The chairman spoke following meetings with the commanders of U.S. European Command, or EUCOM, and U.S. Africa Command.

Russia is a challenge to the United States and its allies, Dunford said, adding, "based on their behavior, based on their capabilities - nuclear, cyber, conventional - based on the threat to our allies."

The Russian strategy document, "About the Strategy of National Security of Russian Federation," was signed by President Vladimir Putin on New Year's Eve and names the United States and the expansion of the NATO alliance as threats to the country. The previous document - signed in 2009 - does not mention the United States or NATO.

Dunford said he believes Russia is viewing strategy from a perspective of what nation poses a threat to them. Still, he said, he has only read open-source reporting about the Russian document and wants a chance to read it before discussing its meaning.

A BROAD LOOK

Russia's behavior in Ukraine, Crimea and Georgia requires the United States to take Russian capabilities seriously, the chairman said.

In some areas, Dunford said, he is comfortable with the U.S. military presence in Europe. In other areas, "the [EUCOM] commander has asked for additional rotational forces and, frankly, long before this announcement was made, has taken a broad look to see how to best advance our interests in Europe in the context of security challenges in Europe, which is clearly Russia," he said.

Since taking office, the chairman has already spoken twice with his counterpart in Moscow, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff of the Russian Armed Forces. "I've spoken with him a couple of times and plan to do that routinely," Dunford said. "We talk about a wide range of issues."

Dunford would like to have a face-to-face meeting with Gerasimov in the context of military-to-military relations. "No matter what the relationships are between states, it's important to keep the lines of communication open," he said. "We did that during the Cold War - we had a hotline that we could use in times of crisis.

"My experience tells me that when you are in a period of difficulty, having a military-to-military, professional relationship … can, one, help you better understand what you are dealing with, and, two, mitigate the risk of miscalculation," the chairman said.

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